


humming live wires

by slybrunette



Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-06
Updated: 2010-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-15 05:39:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slybrunette/pseuds/slybrunette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>future fic; spoilers for 'chuck vs. the honeymooners'. her lips twist around the words funny when she says, “you wouldn’t have stopped me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	humming live wires

It happens that it fizzles out.

It happens that standing on her own two feet while remaining neutral through meetings with Beckman, through missions and everyday basic communication, has become enough of a trial that at the end of the day she just wants something strong to lean on.

A stiff drink.

A stiff drink and, more than once, herself parked in Casey’s living room.

Sarah doesn’t really have friends outside of the ones she’s made through this life she’s led for the last few years, through her life as first Chuck’s handler, second his girlfriend. She’s always been good at dealing with an at times solitary existence but everyone grieves when they put so much of themselves into something that ultimately fails and she isn’t immune to that.

Grieving at Casey’s place is a product of the circumstances. After Chuck, he is the person she is closest to – stalwart and relatively unemotional as he is. His place is as familiar to her as her own but for the fact that it doesn’t contain a bed that she’s slept with Chuck in, always in her line of sight and perpetually half-empty.

“This going to be a regular thing now?” He doesn’t ask how she got in; his skills are her skills are his skills, which is what happens when you work so close to someone for long enough. You start to think like them. You start to anticipate.

“It’s been a week and a half, Casey.” She leans her head back and breathes, “And it’s not every day.”

“I have to listen to _him_ every day,” he casts a cursory glance in the direction of his computers, the screen that is turned away from her but she knows contains the same video and audio surveillance that’s been in place since they got here.

“You can turn those off once in awhile, you know,” she watches him move about the room, like he feels the need to check that everything is just the way he left it. He’s nitpicky about his stuff and everything serves as a hiding place for something else, and she gets that because of the sheer number of weapons stashed throughout her apartment. It’s a risk to deviate from the norm because a weapon not being there when you grab for it can mean the difference between life and death.

Casey’s eyes fall directly on her as he says, “Oh, believe me, there’s some things I have no interest in watching.”

She would blush if she could but her cheeks already feel a little flushed and warm, and her glass is almost empty on the table. It’s not her first. Instead, she falls silent, running her teeth over her lip and taking notice of the movement outside of the window.

“I would think you’ve done this enough times that you’d know how to spring back,” he continues.

“Twice,” she corrects, and she really never wanted to be that girl.

“You’re off by one.”

Right.

Three.

Sarah empties her glass.

She’s not drunk, not yet, but she’s a pleasant kind of buzzed that allows her to say some fairly stupid things. Like, “What about you and Carina?”

He gives her something close to a laugh. “I don’t think I have to spell out the difference between that and what you and Bartowski, and you and Larkin, had going.”

“Might as well; I certainly haven’t heard it enough times.” It comes out sounding far more bitter than perhaps he deserves. Then again.

“No thanks.”

She looks at him from over the back of the chair. He’s by the computers again. “Really?”

“Can’t say I care that much.”

It’s her turn to laugh now and he raises an eyebrow at her. “Your actions dictate otherwise.”

“Yeah?”

Her lips twist around the words funny when she says, “You wouldn’t have stopped me.”

She doesn’t much like to dwell on the past, on what would’ve happened if her and Chuck had gotten on that train and left this life, for good, but she still finds herself doing it. Reliving turning points and paths left untravelled. She’s been thinking about the way he let them ago, about the times that he’s covered their asses in one form or another. She’s been thinking about her and Chuck, and Casey as the third leg of the milking stool. So, really, she’s been thinking a lot about him in the midst of all of this.

“You wouldn’t have stopped me,” she repeats, because he does care – whether it’s about her or Chuck or the both of them – and this solidifies it.

“You would’ve found a way around me even if I had; no use fighting it,” his voice is steady and clear and she wants to call it a defense but she has no real evidence of that. She wants to read something else into his reasoning but he won’t let her.

The buzz that allows her to say some stupid things? It also allows her to do some pretty stupid things as well. Like get out of her chair and head in his general direction. He picks up on this, out of the corner of his eye, but doesn’t say a word and it does nothing to deter her. It starts as an aimless wandering that leads her to the edge of the desk, facing the back of the computers, and him head on. Her fingers dance over the edge of the desk and his eyes follow.

“I’m pretty sure they don’t forbid human emotion in our line of work,” she remarks, brain on auto-pilot; this is stuff she’s thought but never even come close to saying. “You don’t have to act like you never experience anything but anger and…apathy.”

Casey looks even more annoyed – that’s another emotion he’s rather liberal with – than he did when they were just talking in terms of her and Chuck. “I’m changing the locks,” he says, deviating from the topic at hand with the ease of someone who would rather just avoid it all together.

“That’s not how I got in.” It is. But it’s probably not the only way, state-of-the-art security system or not. “And you do care. You would’ve tried to stop me if you didn’t.”

She considers it progress when he mutters, under his breath, “I should’ve.”

“Because you don’t?”

“Because it’s not who you are.” It’s a slip. He should’ve said yes. He shows his hand otherwise and she’s pretty sure he realizes that the second the words are out of his mouth, not that you can see it much in his face.

“And you know who I am?”

“I know who you’re not.”

She comes full way around the desk, perches herself on the edge of it now, and her leg brushes against him. He doesn’t growl at her but his jaw tenses and there’s a vein that jumps, pulls what passes for an amused half-smile out of her. “But you don’t care.”

The feed of Chuck’s bedroom on the screen is empty, as are the others. She decides that’s better than the alternative.

Months ago, on one hell of an ill-prepared mission, she’d kissed him. Or he’d kissed her. It was a backroom with an exit and they were only half a step ahead of their target. There were footsteps in the hall behind them, just out of sight, and he pulled her inside. The thought behind the move was that there wasn’t enough time to ambush them outside – they were too close – but there was enough time to come from behind, follow them out. So he pressed her into a wall and covered her mouth with his own. The kiss was dry and purposeful, absent passion but full of determination, and, more importantly, a good enough cover. Drunk and making out in strange places is generally a better excuse than getting lost on the way to the restroom, she’s come to find.

Their target chose to bypass them, muttering something in German, even as his security entourage eyed them. She played coy, apologized profusely; Casey wouldn’t meet their eyes.

It was a bad judgment call on everyone’s part for two reasons:

1) The guy ended up in handcuffs in a back alley, with his security team on the ground bleeding.

2) Currently, she’s thinking about how he’d kiss if passion _was_ involved in the equation.

“Is there a point to all of this, Walker?” There’s really nothing for him to do but look at her aside from getting up, which would mean admitting she was making him uncomfortable – and she knew she was – so he does. Unflinching eye contact, with his whole body turned towards her, and her leg against his knee.

“You wouldn’t have stopped me.” It’s the third time. She doubts it will be the charm but angles her body towards his anyways. Sarah understands the role of the seductress, knows all the moves; Casey, on the other hand, understands all the ways to rebuff her, to see right through her. All the training in the world and they’re left with nothing but an even playing field.

She’s this close to drunk and it’s been a week and a half, not to mention the part where this is an extremely bad idea, but he moves his hand off of the desk and his fingers first graze, then rest against, her leg and she’s sliding off the desk and into his lap in one smooth movement.

Roughly two seconds later, his hands on her hips, she kisses him. A real kind of kiss instead of some practiced overture. Her eyes drift closed and she distinctly feels the sensation of movement, like things are spinning. She’s fairly sure she didn’t have _that_ much to drink. Her hands find his shoulders, steadying herself when she discovers the desk is decidedly not where she left it.

“John,” she says, against his mouth, when she feels the need to pull back without his mouth chasing hers; he groans, a noise elicited on the merits of the name alone. She rarely uses it and she’s gotten the distinct impression over the past few years that he would prefer it that way. When she looks up, she realizes she’s facing in a different direction than she was – specifically the spinning feeling and the absence of the desk are a product of him swiveling the chair they’re in. A second later, it occurs to her that he did that so the first thing she sees when she looks up isn’t his computer but instead the wall, the staircase right around the sharp bend.

“What?” He asks, drawing her attention back to him. His eyes shift about the room and one of his hands has moved backwards, towards the top drawer of the desk. Probably searching for a weapon, thinking she heard something. She shakes her head, pointedly, then leans back in. His mouth opens when hers does and they fuse together, and it’s scary when she thinks about how many lines this is crossing and how many ways she’s proving him right in regards to her propensity for office romances. How well they can fake moments like this, how much they’ve both learned to use it to their advantage.

This isn’t like with Chuck. This is playing with fire and she’s done this before, with Bryce, and that hadn’t ended well for anyone involved.

Her fingers trail over his jaw, strong lines, and the hem of her shirt gets displaced, briefly, when he adjusts his hold on her. She arches back a little into his hands anyway.

And then.

There is a bright light, sound like static that’s got them both breaking apart in seconds, instincts alive and well. Her eyes catch the monitor on the wall as it blinks to life, and she’s off of his lap and on her feet before Beckman’s staring back at them.

“Colonel Casey,” there’s a pause, “oh good, Agent Walker’s here too.”

Sarah throws a glance in his direction as he gets to his feet, the picture of calm and collected. If she could see her reflection it would mimic the same emotions.

Beckman wants them to get Chuck. Something’s going down, there’s a new mission, and there’s no time for pausing or reassessing their personal situation. When the screen goes black again, Casey’s dialing Chuck’s number, providing a running commentary about him taking too long to answer the damn phone before he barks “Bartowski” into it, when Chuck finally does. She grabs what they’ll need from his arsenal, finds her jacket, and tosses him his keys.

In the precious few seconds it takes Casey to run upstairs to retrieve his bag, leaving her alone by the door, she’s struck by the other reason this is downright scary: their world moves so fast sometimes, that slowing it down for any reason at all feels foreign to her. It feels new and unfamiliar, in a way that it didn’t before with Chuck.

(that was their cover, that was their job – fantasy and reality blended, and the schema in place was built to accommodate that; there’s no schema for this)

They haven’t been trained well for the unfamiliar besides the standard: shoot first, ask questions later.

So far, so good, she thinks, and then his footsteps are on the stairs and they’re out the door in a whirl of weaponry and purpose, the buzz in her head wearing off only to be replaced by one of a different sort.

They’ll deal with this after; for now, it has no place here.


End file.
